Nature Study in Winter: Why the Cold Season Is the Best One

We almost gave up on winter nature study.

It was cold. The children were reluctant. There was nothing to see, they said. Everything was dead.

Then we went outside anyway, and I watched my daughter spend twenty minutes studying the structure of a bare oak tree against the sky — the way the main branches divided, the pattern of smaller branches off those, the tracery of the smallest twigs. She had never looked at a tree that way before. The leaves had been in the way.

Winter nature study is not a lesser version of spring nature study. It is a different thing entirely.

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What Winter Reveals

Bark. You cannot see bark when trees are leafed out. In winter, bark becomes the primary identifying feature. The rough diamond pattern of white ash. The shaggy, peeling strips of shagbark hickory. The smooth, gray-green of beech. The deep furrows of old oak. Children who spend a winter studying bark know trees in a way that summer naturalists never do.

Structure. Branch patterns, the angle of attachment to the main trunk, the overall silhouette of a tree — all invisible when foliage is present, all plainly visible in winter. My daughter can now identify six species of tree from a distance by silhouette alone.

Tracks. Snow is the best tracking medium available. A fresh snowfall and a quiet morning will show you everything that moved through your yard overnight: deer, rabbits, squirrels, cats, birds. Following a track is genuine detective work and produces completely absorbed children.

Lichen. Lichen is always there but rarely noticed until there is nothing else to notice. A hand lens and a winter morning will reveal a world. Lichen is actually two organisms — a fungus and an algae — living in a partnership that has existed for millions of years. That single fact has sent more children to the library than any planned lesson I have devised.

Seeds and pods. What the plant left behind. The milkweed pod split open, the seed tufts mostly gone. The dried coneflower heads still holding seeds. The hard round galls on oak stems where wasps overwintered. Seeds are the plant's bet on the future, and winter strips away everything except the bet.

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Making It Work in the Cold

The obstacle is clothing, not weather. Children who are warm stay outside indefinitely. Children who are cold last eight minutes.

Wool base layers. Waterproof outer layers. Wool socks that stay dry inside waterproof boots. Mittens rather than gloves for small hands. A thermos of something hot.

Once this is sorted, the cold becomes almost irrelevant. My children have done some of their best outdoor observations in temperatures below freezing, because the cold produces a particular quality of attention — quieter, slower, more careful — that warm weather does not.

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The Winter Nature Journal

Winter journal entries are different from spring and summer entries. There are fewer things to draw and describe, which means each entry is more considered.

A single bark rubbing. A track sketch with measurements. A careful drawing of a lichen colony at several times its actual size, using a hand lens. A note about what the light looked like at 4 PM on a January afternoon.

These entries become some of the most interesting in the whole year's journal. The observation required to fill a page when not much is happening is deeper than the observation of a summer meadow full of competing attractions.

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What Winter Nature Study Teaches

It teaches patience. The willingness to look at something slowly, for a long time, without expecting something dramatic to happen.

It teaches that nothing in nature is ever actually dead. The seeds are waiting. The insects are pupating. The bacteria are slowly breaking down the leaf litter. The trees are standing, the energy stored, ready for spring.

It teaches that what appears to be the absence of life is always just a different kind of life.

That is worth going outside for.